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As a doctor, I'd love to believe that if the Republicans lose big Tuesday, it will be the fruit fly dig that sent them over the cliff. I don't know that they'll lose big. I don't know that they'll lose at all. As I said to the Wall Street Journal reporter when she phoned this week, we liberals are never confident, so when we can, we take our pleasures in advance, via the polls. Read More
I kid you not!
Great post. The anti-science bent of the far right is frightening, isn't it? One of the best scientifically-based refutes of Governor Palin's disdain toward fruit flies is here:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/10/25/01849/495
Name sake
I like the idea of coming up with some names to call the moody.. i mean the republicans.I think we should invent a few also for the anti-science people who think depression can be reversed with a brisk walk. I'll keep them to myself,like a respectful melancholic. Keep the spunk Kramer! Sincerely,David
Palin & fruit flies
Bravo, Peter. I am just hoping this election comes off fairly and the Republican administration is banished from our severely damaged economy, educational systems, stem cell research- all scientific research, in fact, and from our lives in general for a long, long time!
Go, Obama!
KK
Kramer on Mindlessness
So Kramer hurls more lightning bolts of idiotic political cant from his fingertips while nestled in the cozy Olympian sandbox of Brown University. Well, lah dee dah. And the masses of adulators wildly applaud his wizened but upon examination fractured affront to measured reasoning.
What else is new? Well plenty. Because now Kramer tells us that hostility to science, civil liberties, government regulation, diplomacy, and even military intelligence are fundamentally embedded in the temperament of anybody who considers himself a conservative.
The pathology is insidious and total! I imagine his therapeutic intervention as the doctor that he portentously informs us that he is, would be heavy drug therapy and then non-pharmaceutical methods only as a last resort.
Kramer spews his invective outside of his domain. And his supplicants are wowed because he wrote a few books and practices his snobbery with an affective academic detachment. Well, lah dee dah again.
But in the end, what is Peter Kramer telling us that we can’t hear from a sozzeled guy sitting next to us on a bar stool at the corner tavern…er… faculty club? Has anybody figured out that life is more complicated than his ugly stereotypes?
A bigger question is, what is this kind of overboard generalization doing in a psychology forum?
Not full of vapid verbosity are we?
SteveM,
If you have a better political commentary, I suggest you be making it on your own blog and linking. A blog is a blog. You can express what you like on it. The Psychology Today scientific articles aren't political opinion. And that's why they aren't also blogs.
Do you have something substantial to say that refutes Kramer, and therefore must also be in defense of Palin's remarks? If you did have a defense of Palin, you haven't made it yet.
States like Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia have voted for the Republican candidate in all elections since 1980.
With that kind of consistency, of course there's stereotypes about conservatives! And frankly, they are gaining momentum. So none of this is 'overboard generalization'.
Furthermore, Allan Lichtman, who devised a system that has picked every winning presidential candidate since 1984, notes that previous governance will determine the election. In this case, it is likely that people are ready for a party change. Except of course, those conservative states which are still voting for the Republican candidate. Quelle surprise.
No There There - Are You From Oakland?
Of course I have better political commentary. But it is more complex than the simplistic academic gas-bagging of Kramer and his ilk (adulators, supplicants, et al. Even you perhaps?)
There is a war of ideas occurring inside of conservatism right now that should have been played out as the eccentric Bush presidency faltered and failed years ago. That did not happen and the Republican Party is paying the price. But Kramer knows nothing about that.
He knows nothing about how it was the liberal call for relaxation of mortgage lending guidelines to include unqualified buyers that precipitated the current financial mess. And how the Bush administration grossly violated conservative economic principles by having government subsidize risk. Once risk can be transferred to government all hell has to break loose. And it did. Subsidizing Wall Street is not conservative. It’s genuine response would be to let those guys go broke.
And Kramer does not limit his ad hominem attacks to Palin. He extends them to an entire class of people. And the last time I looked, those people work, pay taxes and are ones who feed the hungry and clothe the poor as members of social concerns committees of their churches. Kramer demonizes them from his smug little outpost in Providence where cheap talk is equated with heroic standing.
Kramer lauds Scientism as the blueprint for progress. But read this lacerating review of Richard Dawkins’ arguments by physicist Stephen Barr.
http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=373
It’s written from Catholic perspective, but Barr’s impeccable logic lays bare the stark Darwinian reality. Kramer can be an atheist and ridicule those who are not. But if he is honest with himself, he has the road to nihilism staring him right in the eye.
I’m not arguing against atheism. It’s not my job and this is not the right forum. However, I use Barr’s essay to illustrate that there is a rich complexity of understanding embedded in the human condition. At least Barr has thought it through from his perspective.
Kramer not only does not capture the complexity with his trite polemics, he explicitly evades the intellectual and philosophical exploration. His writings suggest the limitations of a self-absorbed linear thinker. In other words, he probably couldn’t do it if he tried. Well if he can’t do it, then I guess somebody else is going to have to do it for him.
And I know all about Lichtman and his model. It’s a good schtick. And the Republicans deserve to lose. But Kramer’s simplistic analysis isn’t about that.
And re: “vapid verbosity” Listen Pal, if you can’t match up, don’t play.
Knee-Jerk
Knee-jerk a**holes. Not to mince words or anything. But what's wanted here is an abundantly common and quite improper noun.
peter kramer
Who really cares what Peter Kramer has to say about politics??????
Who cares what Peter Kramer
Who cares what Peter Kramer has to say about politics? Those who are aware of Dr. Kramer's exceptional intelligence, his profound understanding of people and of how the world works!
Anonymous?! Is that you Dr.
Anonymous?!
Is that you Dr. Kramer?
It couldn't be David P. who is forever stalking your blogs, his sentence structure is not quite so lucid.
Garrison Keillor describes
Garrison Keillor describes the situation elegantly when he writes:
"It was dishonest, cynical men who put forward a clueless young woman for national office, hoping to juice up the ticket, hoping she could skate through two months of chaperoned campaigning, but the truth emerges: The lady is talking freely about matters she has never thought about."
The Idiot Wave Equation
Substitute "gasbag Senator who can't put a sentence together without prevaricating" for "clueless young woman" and a certain disquieting symmetry emerges.
P.S. And didn't Keillor turn miserable crank years ago?
Devil's night
Hope you had a fun Halloween-this explains some of the scary sensitivity rejection. Sincerely,David
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